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Projet Montréal slams extra pay doled out to politicians in six boroughs

Author of the article:

Linda Gyulai • Montreal Gazette

Publishing date:

December 5, 2014 • 3 minute read

Russell Copeman, Montreal City Councillor and the borough mayor for Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-des -Graces addresses a citizen who posed a question during city council meeting at city hall in Montreal, Monday November 24, 2014.Vincenzo D'Alto/ Montreal Gazette

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Long-retired councillors, current borough councillors and one borough mayor in Montreal are getting paid out of a little-known envelope in the budgets of a handful of Montreal boroughs, and that has touched off a debate about politician pay scales.

Luc Ferrandez, interim leader of opposition Projet Montréal party, slammed a practice by six of Montreal’s 19 boroughs that top up the salaries of local elected officials paid by the city, as the Montreal Gazette reported on Thursday.

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In most cases, the boroughs said they’re topping up the salaries of borough-level councillors because they judged them to be inadequate compared with those of local city councillors for similar work. The annual top-ups are about $10,500 to $11,850 per borough councillor.

“I’m very uncomfortable with it,” Ferrandez said in response to the newspaper report, which found such boroughs as Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Verdun and LaSalle are paying about $230,000 in extra remuneration in 2014 and are budgeting about $210,000 in 2015.

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With the administration of Mayor Denis Coderre imposing cost-cutting on the boroughs, it’s inappropriate to top up politicians’ salaries, Ferrandez said. He is also borough mayor of Plateau-Mont-Royal, which paid $6,000 to a deputy mayor this year but no raises for borough councillors.

“With the cost-cutting, we’re now often refusing contributions of $1,000 or $2,000 to community organizations,” he said. “We can’t accept to provide additional remuneration to people who already have a salary. You just have to look at the day-to-day decisions concerning much smaller amounts that we’re refusing to give to or cutting from community groups.”

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Ferrandez said his harshest criticism is for Côte-des-Neiges–N.D.G., which is budgeting $22,800 in extra salary and benefits to borough mayor Russell Copeman in 2015.

Copeman, who was elected in November 2013, inherited the additional remuneration, which was introduced by a previous borough administration in 2007. The mayor of Côte-des-Neiges–N.D.G. at the time was Michael Applebaum.

“Unforgivable,” Ferrandez said of the top-up.

“It’s completely unjustified. Does Mr. Copeman do more work than the mayor of another borough? To my knowledge, no.”

A 2007 borough resolution introducing the extra pay called it “fairness” because Côte-des-Neiges–N.D.G. has the largest population of the boroughs, which “generates an uncommon volume of files, queries and requests to be addressed among others by the mayor of the borough.” The resolution noted that mayors’ salaries in Quebec are set according to population.

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Copeman said he agrees with the logic. Moreover, the borough contains universities and hospitals among its institutions, which adds to responsibility and workload, he said.

Boroughs can top up salaries so long as they pay it from their local budget and total salaries don’t exceed provincial limits on councillors’ pay.

Copeman, a member of the executive committee, is earning the maximum $144,897 permitted for a city councillor in 2014, which includes the borough’s top-up.

“As a member of the executive committee, he (Copeman) can’t be working full-time at the borough,” Ferrandez said, adding that other boroughs could invoke commercial activity and other reasons to raise their mayor’s salary. “Since he’s an honest man, I think he’ll be obliged to withdraw it.”

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But with a population of 165,000, Côte-des-Neiges–N.D.G. would be the sixth-largest city in Quebec, Copeman said. “It would be larger, for example, than the city of Sherbrooke,” which pays its mayor $139,000, he said.

The next largest boroughs are Villeray–St-Michel–Parc-Extension (population: 142,000), Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie (134,000) and Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (131,500).

A borough councillor in Montreal gets a base salary of $30,134 from the city. A city councillor gets $52,157. Positions such as borough mayor and executive committee member are paid extra, also by the city.

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Meanwhile, Verdun has the highest budget for top-ups, $81,300. The 2015 budget shows it going to zero, but borough mayor Jean-François Parenteau confirmed it’s an error. The borough will continue to pay about $7,000 extra to each of its four borough councillors and extras for heading local committees.

Still, Parenteau, who was elected in 2013, said he discovered this week that nearly half of the $81,300 goes to pension payments to living former elected officials of the pre-merger suburb of Verdun who served more than one term.

“Justified or not,” he said, “it’s part of the history of Verdun. These were contracts and commitments that were made.”

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